In his submission, Dr Conor McCormick, of Queen’s University Belfast, compares four models for organising and exercising the lord advocate’s functions: the current “spliced” model, a “superintendence” model like that in England and Wales, a “sponsorship” model and a “siloed” model like that in Northern Ireland. Each strikes a different balance between independence, accountability and trust.

He says the existing safeguards are substantial and, in the absence of representative evidence that public distrust warrants it, or something of a similar order, he does not think the current combination of functions needs to be split.

He cautions that “each alternative to the status quo can only achieve something by giving something up” and that “[a]ny reform proposal adopted without reckoning with what it would cost risks substituting one set of legitimacy problems for another”.